How can I choose a good topic for my

research paper?
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Answered By: Erin Mooney

Last Updated: Oct 30, 2015

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How do you decide what to write about when confronted with a research paper? You want a
focused topic that will make a good paper.
Here are some things to consider:

Make sure your topic meets the assignment requirements. Read it closely. Ask
your professor for feedback if you are unsure.

Choose a topic that is interesting to you. It may seem obvious, but this will make
the research process more fun and engaging for you.

Consider the scope of your topic. If your topic is too broad it may be hard to find
information that is focused and relevant; if your topic is too narrow it may be hard to
find any information at all.

Here's one strategy for developing a research topic once you have a broad topic in mind:

Background research will help you develop your topic and hone or change it in more
appropriate ways. Though this seems like extra work, it is actually a vital, time-saving
step. Knowing more about your topic's background can only help you develop a more
effective topic, and therefore, research paper.

Brainstorm concepts. Once you think of a broad topic that interests you, try to
brainstorm all of the words or concepts you can that might be related to that topic. For
example, if your topic is "polar bears," you might think of the following words and
topics in association: ice, cubs, pollution, hunting, diet, climate change, and
environmental icon. It may help to write this process down.

Develop a research question. Once you have come up with a broad topic and done
some background research, you may want to develop a research question, or a
question you're going to answer in your paper by doing more, in-depth research.

What's your general approach to the topic? Think about some general approaches
that may help you further develop your topic: use a historical angle by focusing on a
particular time period; a geographical angle, focusing on a particular part of the
world; or a sociological angle, focusing on a particular group of people.

Start doing some exploratory, in-depth research. As you do more in-depth

research, like looking for scholarly articles, books, and other sources to include in
your paper, you can and probably will modify or refine your topic based on what you
find.

Research is a dynamic process. Don't be afraid to discover new things and modify or
refine your topic.

The topic development process will help you to develop your thesis, which is essentially your
proposed answer to your research question. You will then be ready to use the sources you've
found, and find more sources in order to support that thesis, or to answer your research
question.
Here's an example of how the topic development process above can lead you to a thesis:

Resources that can help you develop your topic:

Your instructor, course readings, class notes, Wikipedia, and Google can all be
helpful in terms of getting ideas for broad topics for further, in-depth research using
more scholarly resources.

A Research Guide for a particular subject created by a subject librarian is great for
helping you choose where to begin your research. These online guides will identify
encyclopedias, books, databases, and other materials to help you get started with
research in your chosen academic field. You can also ask a librarian at the Library
Service Desk.

Library resources like CQ Researcher and subject-specific encyclopedias can

help you come up with topic ideas because they provide great overviews and
introductions to topics. You can find links to these kinds of resources in the Research
Guides mentioned above. These will probably not be scholarly sources you can use in
your paper, but they may lead you to more in-depth, scholarly resources that you will
want to use in your paper.

Brainstorming Research Questions

Tip Sheet 10

Ask these questions:

What is it?
It is the process of thinking up and writing down a set of questions that you want to answer
about the research topic you have selected.
Why should I do it?
It will keep you from getting lost or off-track when looking for information. You will try to
find the answers to these questions when you do your research.
When do I do it?
After you have written your statement of purpose, when you will have a focused topic to ask
questions about.
How do I do it?
You will be making two lists of questions. One for "factual" questions and one for
"interpretive" questions. The answers to factual questions will give your reader the basic
background information they need to understand your topic. The answers to interpretive
questions show your creative thinking in your project and can become the basis for your
thesis statement.
Asking factual questions:
Assume your reader knows nothing about your subject. Make an effort to tell them
everything they need to know to understand what you will say in your project.
Make a list of specific questions that ask : Who? What? When? Where?
Example: For a report about President Abraham Lincoln's attitude and policies towards
slavery, people will have to know; Who was Abraham Lincoln? Where and when was he
born? What political party did he belong to? When was he elected president? What were the
attitudes and laws about slavery during his lifetime? How did his actions affect slavery?
Asking Interpretive Questions:
These kinds of questions are the result of your own original thinking. They can be based on
the preliminary research you have done on your chosen topic. Select one or two to answer in
your presentation. They can be the basis of forming a thesis statement.

A. Hypothetical: How would things be different today if something in the past had been
different?

Example: How would our lives be different today if the Confederate (southern) states had
won the United States Civil War? What would have happened to the course of World War
Two if the Atomic Bomb hadn't been dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki?
B. Prediction: How will something look or be in the future, based on the way it is now?
Example: What will happen to sea levels if global warming due to ozone layer depletion
continues and the polar caps melt significantly? If the population of China continues to grow
at the current rate for the next fifty years, how will that impact its role in world politics?
C. Solution: What solutions can be offered to a problem that exists today?
Example: How could global warming be stopped? What can be done to stop the spread of
sexually transmitted diseases among teenagers?
D. Comparison or Analogy: Find the similarities and differences between your main subject
and a similar subject, or with another subject in the same time period or place.
Example: In what ways is the Civil War in the former Yugoslavia similar to (or different
from) the United States Civil War?
What is the difference in performance between a Porsche and a Lamborghini?
E. Judgment: Based on the information you find, what can you say as your informed opinion
about the subject?
Example: How does tobacco advertising affect teen cigarette smoking? What are the major
causes of eating disorders among young women? How does teen parenthood affect the future
lives of young women and men?

Brainstorming
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What this handout is about

This handout discusses techniques that will help you start writing a paper and continue
writing through the challenges of the revising process. Brainstorming can help you choose a
topic, develop an approach to a topic, or deepen your understanding of the topics potential.
Introduction

If you consciously take advantage of your natural thinking processes by gathering your
brains energies into a storm, you can transform these energies into written words or
diagrams that will lead to lively, vibrant writing. Below you will find a brief discussion of
what brainstorming is, why you might brainstorm, and suggestions for how you might
brainstorm.

Whether you are starting with too much information or not enough, brainstorming can help
you to put a new writing task in motion or revive a project that hasnt reached completion.
Lets take a look at each case:
When youve got nothing: You might need a storm to approach when you feel blank about
the topic, devoid of inspiration, full of anxiety about the topic, or just too tired to craft an
orderly outline. In this case, brainstorming stirs up the dust, whips some air into our stilled
pools of thought, and gets the breeze of inspiration moving again.
When youve got too much: There are times when you have too much chaos in your brain
and need to bring in some conscious order. In this case, brainstorming forces the mental
chaos and random thoughts to rain out onto the page, giving you some concrete words or
schemas that you can then arrange according to their logical relations.
Brainstorming techniques

What follows are great ideas on how to brainstormideas from professional writers, novice
writers, people who would rather avoid writing, and people who spend a lot of time
brainstorming aboutwell, how to brainstorm.
Try out several of these options and challenge yourself to vary the techniques you rely on;
some techniques might suit a particular writer, academic discipline, or assignment better than
others. If the technique you try first doesnt seem to help you, move right along and try some
others.
Freewriting
When you freewrite, you let your thoughts flow as they will, putting pen to paper and writing
down whatever comes into your mind. You dont judge the quality of what you write and you
dont worry about style or any surface-level issues, like spelling, grammar, or punctuation. If
you cant think of what to say, you write that downreally. The advantage of this technique
is that you free up your internal critic and allow yourself to write things you might not write
if you were being too self-conscious.
When you freewrite you can set a time limit (Ill write for 15 minutes!) and even use a
kitchen timer or alarm clock or you can set a space limit (Ill write until I fill four full
notebook pages, no matter what tries to interrupt me!) and just write until you reach that
goal. You might do this on the computer or on paper, and you can even try it with your eyes
shut or the monitor off, which encourages speed and freedom of thought.
The crucial point is that you keep on writing even if you believe you are saying nothing.
Word must follow word, no matter the relevance. Your freewriting might even look like this:
This paper is supposed to be on the politics of tobacco production but even though I went to
all the lectures and read the book I cant think of what to say and Ive felt this way for four
minutes now and I have 11 minutes left and I wonder if Ill keep thinking nothing during
every minute but Im not sure if it matters that I am babbling and I dont know what else to
say about this topic and it is rainy today and I never noticed the number of cracks in that wall

before and those cracks remind me of the walls in my grandfathers study and he smoked and
he farmed and I wonder why he didnt farm tobacco
When youre done with your set number of minutes or have reached your page goal, read
back over the text. Yes, there will be a lot of filler and unusable thoughts but there also will
be little gems, discoveries, and insights. When you find these gems, highlight them or cut and
paste them into your draft or onto an ideas sheet so you can use them in your paper. Even if
you dont find any diamonds in there, you will have either quieted some of the noisy chaos or
greased the writing gears so that you can now face the assigned paper topic.
Break down the topic into levels
Once you have a course assignment in front of you, you might brainstorm:

the general topic, like The relationship between tropical fruits and
colonial powers

a specific subtopic or required question, like How did the availability

of multiple tropical fruits influence competition amongst colonial powers
trading from the larger Caribbean islands during the 19th century?

a single term or phrase that you sense youre overusing in the

paper. For example: If you see that youve written increased the
competition about a dozen times in your tropical fruits paper, you could
brainstorm variations on the phrase itself or on each of the main terms:
increased and competition.

Listing/bulleting
In this technique you jot down lists of words or phrases under a particular topic. You can base
your list on:

the general topic

one or more words from your particular thesis claim

a word or idea that is the complete opposite of your original word or idea.

For example, if your general assignment is to write about the changes in inventions over time,
and your specific thesis claims that the 20th century presented a large number of inventions
to advance US society by improving upon the status of 19th-century society, you could
brainstorm two different lists to ensure you are covering the topic thoroughly and that your
thesis will be easy to prove.
The first list might be based on your thesis; you would jot down as many 20th-century
inventions as you could, as long as you know of their positive effects on society. The second
list might be based on the opposite claim, and you would instead jot down inventions that you
associate with a decline in that societys quality. You could do the same two lists for 19thcentury inventions and then compare the evidence from all four lists.

Using multiple lists will help you to gather more perspective on the topic and ensure that,
sure enough, your thesis is solid as a rock, or, uh oh, your thesis is full of holes and youd
better alter your claim to one you can prove.
3 perspectives
Looking at something from different perspectives helps you see it more completelyor at
least in a completely different way, sort of like laying on the floor makes your desk look very
different to you. To use this strategy, answer the questions for each of the three perspectives,
then look for interesting relationships or mismatches you can explore.
1. Describe it: Describe your subject in detail. What is your topic? What are
its components? What are its interesting and distinguishing features? What
are its puzzles? Distinguish your subject from those that are similar to it.
How is your subject unlike others?
2. Trace it: What is the history of your subject? How has it changed over
time? Why? What are the significant events that have influenced your
subject?
3. Map it: What is your subject related to? What is it influenced by? How?
What does it influence? How? Who has a stake in your topic? Why? What
fields do you draw on for the study of your subject? Why? How has your
subject been approached by others? How is their work related to yours?

Cubing
Cubing enables you to consider your topic from six different directions; just as a cube is sixsided, your cubing brainstorming will result in six sides or approaches to the topic. Take a
sheet of paper, consider your topic, and respond to these six commands.
1. Describe it.
2. Compare it.
3. Associate it.
4. Analyze it.
5. Apply it.
6. Argue for and against it.

Look over what youve written. Do any of the responses suggest anything new about your
topic? What interactions do you notice among the sides? That is, do you see patterns
repeating, or a theme emerging that you could use to approach the topic or draft a thesis?
Does one side seem particularly fruitful in getting your brain moving? Could that one side
help you draft your thesis statement? Use this technique in a way that serves your topic. It
should, at least, give you a broader awareness of the topics complexities, if not a sharper
focus on what you will do with it.

Similes
In this technique, complete the following sentence:
____________________ is/was/are/were like _____________________.
In the first blank put one of the terms or concepts your paper centers on. Then try to
brainstorm as many answers as possible for the second blank, writing them down as you
come up with them.
After you have produced a list of options, look over your ideas. What kinds of ideas come
forward? What patterns or associations do you find?
Clustering/mapping/webbing:
The general idea:
This technique has three (or more) different names, according to how you describe the
activity itself or what the end product looks like. In short, you will write a lot of different
terms and phrases onto a sheet of paper in a random fashion and later go back to link the
words together into a sort of map or web that forms groups from the separate parts.
Allow yourself to start with chaos. After the chaos subsides, you will be able to create some
order out of it.
To really let yourself go in this brainstorming technique, use a large piece of paper or tape
two pieces together. You could also use a blackboard if you are working with a group of
people. This big vertical space allows all members room to storm at the same time, but you
might have to copy down the results onto paper later. If you dont have big paper at the
moment, dont worry. You can do this on an 8 by 11 as well. Watch our short videos on
webbing, drawing relationships, and color coding for demonstrations.
How to do it:
1. Take your sheet(s) of paper and write your main topic in the center, using
a word or two or three.
2. Moving out from the center and filling in the open space any way you are
driven to fill it, start to write down, fast, as many related concepts or
terms as you can associate with the central topic. Jot them quickly, move
into another space, jot some more down, move to another blank, and just
keep moving around and jotting. If you run out of similar concepts, jot
down opposites, jot down things that are only slightly related, or jot down
your grandpas name, but try to keep moving and associating. Dont worry
about the (lack of) sense of what you write, for you can chose to keep or
toss out these ideas when the activity is over.
3. Once the storm has subsided and you are faced with a hail of terms and
phrases, you can start to cluster. Circle terms that seem related and then
draw a line connecting the circles. Find some more and circle them and
draw more lines to connect them with what you think is closely related.
When you run out of terms that associate, start with another term. Look

for concepts and terms that might relate to that term. Circle them and
then link them with a connecting line. Continue this process until you have
found all the associated terms. Some of the terms might end up uncircled,
but these loners can also be useful to you. (Note: You can use different
colored pens/pencils/chalk for this part, if you like. If thats not possible,
try to vary the kind of line you use to encircle the topics; use a wavy line,
a straight line, a dashed line, a dotted line, a zigzaggy line, etc. in order to
see what goes with what.)
4. There! When you stand back and survey your work, you should see a set
of clusters, or a big web, or a sort of map: hence the names for this
activity. At this point you can start to form conclusions about how to
approach your topic. There are about as many possible results to this
activity as there are stars in the night sky, so what you do from here will
depend on your particular results. Lets take an example or two in order to
illustrate how you might form some logical relationships between the
clusters and loners youve decided to keep. At the end of the day, what
you do with the particular map or cluster set or web that you
produce depends on what you need. What does this map or web tell you to
do? Explore an option or two and get your draft going!

Relationship between the parts

In this technique, begin by writing the following pairs of terms on opposite margins of one
sheet of paper:
Whole

Parts

Part

Parts of Parts

Part

Parts of Parts

Part

Parts of Parts

Looking over these four groups of pairs, start to fill in your ideas below each heading. Keep
going down through as many levels as you can. Now, look at the various parts that comprise
the parts of your whole concept. What sorts of conclusions can you draw according to the
patterns, or lack of patterns, that you see? For a related strategy, watch our short video on
drawing relationships.
Journalistic questions
In this technique you would use the big six questions that journalists rely on to thoroughly
research a story. The six are: Who?, What?, When?, Where?, Why?, and How?. Write
each question word on a sheet of paper, leaving space between them. Then, write out some
sentences or phrases in answer, as they fit your particular topic. You might also answer into a
tape recorder if youd rather talk out your ideas.
Now look over your batch of responses. Do you see that you have more to say about one or
two of the questions? Or, are your answers for each question pretty well balanced in depth
and content? Was there one question that you had absolutely no answer for? How might this
awareness help you to decide how to frame your thesis claim or to organize your paper? Or,

how might it reveal what you must work on further, doing library research or interviews or
further note-taking?
For example, if your answers reveal that you know a lot more about where and why
something happened than you know about what and when, how could you use this lack
of balance to direct your research or to shape your paper? How might you organize your
paper so that it emphasizes the known versus the unknown aspects of evidence in the field of
study? What else might you do with your results?
Thinking outside the box
Even when you are writing within a particular academic discipline, you can take advantage of
your semesters of experience in other courses from other departments. Lets say you are
writing a paper for an English course. You could ask yourself, Hmmm, if I were writing
about this very same topic in a biology course or using this term in a history course, how
might I see or understand it differently? Are there varying definitions for this concept within,
say, philosophy or physics, that might encourage me to think about this term from a new,
richer point of view?
For example, when discussing culture in your English, communications, or cultural studies
course, you could incorporate the definition of culture that is frequently used in the
biological sciences. Remember those little Petri dishes from your lab experiments in high
school? Those dishes are used to culture substances for bacterial growth and analysis,
right? How might it help you write your paper if you thought of culture as a medium upon
which certain things will grow, will develop in new ways or will even flourish beyond
expectations, but upon which the growth of other things might be retarded, significantly
altered, or stopped altogether?
Using charts or shapes
If you are more visually inclined, you might create charts, graphs, or tables in lieu of word
lists or phrases as you try to shape or explore an idea. You could use the same phrases or
words that are central to your topic and try different ways to arrange them spatially, say in a
graph, on a grid, or in a table or chart. You might even try the trusty old flow chart. The
important thing here is to get out of the realm of words alone and see how different spatial
representations might help you see the relationships among your ideas. If you cant imagine
the shape of a chart at first, just put down the words on the page and then draw lines between
or around them. Or think of a shape. Do your ideas most easily form a triangle? square?
umbrella? Can you put some ideas in parallel formation? In a line?
Consider purpose and audience
Think about the parts of communication involved in any writing or speaking event act:
purpose and audience.
What is your purpose? What are you trying to do? What verb captures
your intent? Are you trying to inform? Convince? Describe? Each purpose
will lead you to a different set of information and help you shape material
to include and exclude in a draft. Write about why you are writing this

draft in this form. For more tips on figuring out the purpose of your
assignment, see our handout on understanding assignments.
Who is your audience? Who are you communicating with beyond the
grader? What does that audience need to know? What do they already
know? What information does that audience need first, second, third?
Write about who you are writing to and what they need. For more on
audience, see our handout on audience.

Dictionaries, thesauruses, encyclopedias

When all else failsthis is a tried and true method, loved for centuries by writers of all
stripe. Visit the library reference areas or stop by the Writing Center to browse various
dictionaries, thesauruses (or other guide books and reference texts), encyclopedias or surf
their online counterparts. Sometimes these basic steps are the best ones. It is almost
guaranteed that youll learn several things you did not know.
If youre looking at a hard copy reference, turn to your most important terms and see what
sort of variety you find in the definitions. The obscure or archaic definition might help you to
appreciate the terms breadth or realize how much its meaning has changed as the language
changed. Could that realization be built into your paper somehow?
If you go to online sources, use their own search functions to find your key terms and see
what suggestions they offer. For example, if you plug good into a thesaurus search, you
will be given 14 different entries. Whew! If you were analyzing the film Good Will Hunting,
imagine how you could enrich your paper by addressed the six or seven ways that good
could be interpreted according to how the scenes, lighting, editing, music, etc., emphasized
various aspects of good.
An encyclopedia is sometimes a valuable resource if you need to clarify facts, get quick
background, or get a broader context for an event or item. If you are stuck because you have a
vague sense of a seemingly important issue, do a quick check with this reference and you
may be able to move forward with your ideas.
Closing

Armed with a full quiver of brainstorming techniques and facing sheets of jotted ideas,
bulleted subtopics, or spidery webs relating to your paper, what do you do now?
Take the next step and start to write your first draft, or fill in those gaps youve been
brainstorming about to complete your almost ready paper. If youre a fan of outlining,
prepare one that incorporates as much of your brainstorming data as seems logical to you. If
youre not a fan, dont make one. Instead, start to write out some larger chunks (large groups
of sentences or full paragraphs) to expand upon your smaller clusters and phrases. Keep
building from there into larger sections of your paper. You dont have to start at the beginning
of the draft. Start writing the section that comes together most easily. You can always go back
to write the introduction later.
We also have helpful handouts on some of the next steps in your writing process, such as
reorganizing drafts and argument.

Remember, once youve begun the paper, you can stop and try another brainstorming
technique whenever you feel stuck. Keep the energy moving and try several techniques to
find what suits you or the particular project you are working on.
Works consulted

We consulted these works while writing the original version of this handout. This is not a
comprehensive list of resources on the handouts topic, and we encourage you to do your own
research to find the latest publications on this topic. Please do not use this list as a model for
the format of your own reference list, as it may not match the citation style you are using. For
guidance on formatting citations, please see the UNC Libraries citation tutorial.
Allen, Roberta, and Marcia Mascolini. The Process of Writing: Composing through Critical
Thinking. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice, 1997.
Cameron, Julia. The Artists Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity. Rev. ed. New York:
Putnam, 2002.
Goldberg, Natalie. Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within. Rev. ed. Boston:
Shambhala, 2005.
Rosen, Leonard J., and Laurence Behrens. The Allyn & Bacon Handbook. 5th ed. New York:
Longman, 2003.
University of Richmond Writing Center. Writers Web.

Brainstorm your ideas

Before you can determine what points you want to make in your essay, you need to
do some brainstorming and some research to make sure you have a good idea of all
the issues relevant to your topic; only then can you select the most important ones.
Its likely that, from your readings, lectures and tutorials, you will have a fair idea of
the ground you need to cover, so you can probably start to brainstorm straight away,
before you even set foot in a library. The first thing to do, then, is think:

What are the various issues/problems that characterise your topic?

What theories or examples of research relate to your topic?

What questions arise when thinking about your topic?

What tricky or contentious terms need to be defined within your topic area?

Many students find that, initially, some sort of spray diagram or helps them to think
out the many facets of their topic. This, in turn, can help them decide which area they
need to focus on to make their analysis sufficiently deep. At this stage, try not to
think about what your essay will look like. Rather, concentrate on teasing out every
possible angle of discussion so you can make conscious choices about what to
include in the final piece.